Super Mario 3D Land became the fast-selling game in franchise history when released last fall. That kind of success tends to spawn sequels. However, 3D Land director Koichi Hayashida says that a sequel is easier said than done.
"I guess I have to say first of all that Super Mario Galaxy 2 development was really, really hard for us," Hayashida told GameInformer. "We usually have the opportunity to look at technological innovation in a new piece of hardware that can drive us to new play experiences for people who love Mario. When you have to make a second Mario game on the same hardware generation, you don’t have that same driving force to push you into completely new experiences based on unique hardware capabilities.
"The burden was on us in the case of Super Mario Galaxy 2 to try and come up with ideas that could surprise people without the technological innovation pushing us as it would have normally."
He adds that, when designing Galaxy 2, the team tried to use all of the left-over ideas that weren't used in the first game. This turned out to be "quite a challenge" because the ideas that didn't make the cut the first time around were generally harder to implement or weren't as "effective."
"But this time around we didn’t even have that situation because I don’t feel like we left very many ideas at all, if any, on the cutting room floor of Super Mario 3D Land. Maybe if we hadn’t been able to include statue Mario that could have been an element that could’ve came forward to another game, but as it turned out very late in development we did have the chance to include statue Mario as a reward for players who were able to reach the special worlds."
Super Mario 3D Land was released for the 3DS in November. Read more about it in our review.
